Reaching the Point of Orgasm

There are many big questions to ponder. You know, questions that fit into that ultimate category of life, the universe and everything. What is the meaning of life? What is the nature of God? How can one make love stay? And, dare I say it, what is the point of the female orgasm?

These are the kinds of things that keep one up at night, apparently.

As the requisite online orgasm girl (verified by Gawker, no less), I’ve gotten a lot of questions over a short piece entitled, “What is the point of the female orgasm?” published in Popular Science a few weeks ago. The big question seems to be whether or not female orgasms are some kind of evolutionary afterthought, a by-product of selection in males (the corollary would be nipples on men–nice to have, perhaps, but not necessary to producing offspring). It’s a pretty hotly debated topic but a recent twin study has offered evidence against the by-product theory:

The schism between the two camps deepened this month with the publication of a new study of twins and siblings in Animal Behavior that seems to rule out the by-product theory of female orgasm. Researchers Brendan Zietsch at the University of Queensland in Australia and Pekka Santtila at Abo Akedemi University in Finland asked 10,000 Finnish female and male twins and siblings to report on their “orgasmability” (their word, not mine). They looked for similarities in orgasm function between female and male twins. If the by-product theory of female orgasm is true, they say, this similarity should exist. Due to the inherent differences in orgasm between women and men, females were asked to report how often they had orgasms during sex and how difficult they were to achieve, while males were asked how long it took them to reach orgasm during the act and how often they felt they ejaculated too quickly or too slowly.

Zietsch and Santtila found strong orgasmability correlations among same-sex identical twins, and weaker yet still significant similarities between same-sex non-identical twins and siblings. However, they found zero correlation in orgasm function between opposite-sex twins. “We show that while male and female orgasmic function are influenced by genes, there is no cross-sex correlation in orgasmic function — women’s orgasmability doesn’t correlate with their brother’s orgasmability,” explains Zietsch. “As such, there is no path by which selection on male orgasm can be transferred to female orgasm, in which case the by-product theory cannot work.”

Of course, proponents of the by-product theory say this evidence is shaky at best–and they are sticking to their guns. But I suppose I’m wondering, after doing my own first-person research for DIRTY MINDS: HOW OUR BRAINS INFLUENCE LOVE, SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS is whether we should be thinking about selection of orgasm in purely sexual terms. Evolution, you see, rarely works in a linear-type fashion. There are usually more than a few factors at play for a given trait to be selected. Given that the female orgasm activates over 30 distinct brain areas, I can’t help but wonder if it was also selected for because it gives the brain a much-needed work-out and influx of oxygenated blood–making it not a by-product or a help to reproduction, but something that in the course of encouraging us to have sex, helps keeps our brain healthier longer.

Regardless, there’s still plenty we don’t know about the female orgasm–and I look forward to seeing where these various lines of research are headed next. Until then, I guess we’ll all have to keep staying up nights wondering…or doing our own personal research into the matter to keep us distracted.